An Unlikely Alliance
by James Cockayne
Summary: A quiet night in Atlantis turns out to be quite the opposite, as the team races against the clock once again to save the city. Also, an unlikely alliance is formed.
1. Chapter 1

**C****hapter One.**

The coffee was cold now. Elizabeth had made it over an hour ago, but with the amount of paperwork to be done, finding time to actually drink it seemed impossible. She sighed as she tasted the drink. Enough was enough, she decided, placing the mug onto her desk. She sat In her chair, and rested her forehead into her palms, nearly falling over as she did so. She began to think how easy her life would be if she hadn't accepted the Atlantis job a little over two years ago. She'd sleep at least eight hours a night, and the most stressful her life would get would be deciding which clothes to put on in the morning. She could never go back though. She'd seen too much, met too many amazing people. Then, she began to realise just how lucky she was. She looked up at the pile of unfinished personnel reports on her desk and sighed again. They could wait until the morning. As soon as this thought came to her, a loud shout came from the general direction of the gate room: "_Unscheduled off-world activation!"._

A third time, she sighed.

"So, what do we have?", Weir shouted as she ran to the main console in the middle of the room.

"Nothing so far ma'am," came the immediate reply, "We've... uh... a transmission. A transmission just came through as a high frequency data burst."

"Is there video?", Weir asked quickly.

"No, just sound. Playing now.".At first, all that could be heard was static, but after a few seconds, a voice. As soon s the first word was uttered, Weir knew it was Wraith. She also knew there'd be no sleep for her tonight. The Wraith began by addressing Weir, and then started it's message; "My hive has been under heavy attack."

Weir was confused, and felt nothing bt rage at the fact the Wraith had the cheek to contact her like this. '_They're bound to make a threat,'_ she thought. '_I can't be doing with this right now.'. _The Wraith continued. "The Replicators have perfected beaming technology. They have managed to hide four nuclear devices on our hive ship. They have the potential to obliterate us. We believe they have also hidden some devices in your city.".

Elizabeth was still confused. "Why exactly are you telling us this? You could keep this to yourselves and eliminate us completely."

"We propose a temporary alliance."

Everybody in the room nervously looked at one another.

"And in return for this information...?", Weir stuttered, dumbfounded.

"You will help us locate our devices, then join us in an assault on a nearby Aurora class ship."

"Mute the feed." Weir snapped. She turned to look at the team, who had gathered over the course of the short message. "Well?", she asked. McKay was first to speak.

"There's absolutely no way that he is telling the truth. About a year ago, I managed to get every sensor system in the base working. If there had been something beamed into Atlantis, I would know about it.", he stated quickly, and confidently. Before he had a chance to continue, Zelenka interrupted him. "No, Rodney. We modified the sensors to detect things _coming in_ to Atlantis, remember? If the Wraith is telling the truth and they were _beamed_ in, we wouldn't know about it at all.". McKay's face was one of confusion for a split second, then he realised he was indeed wrong. He shot a glare at Radek. "If I remember correctly, it was you who made that modification Radek, not m...".

" - No it wasn't."

"Yes it was!"

Sheppard silenced them both: "Enough! If there is even a chance that this Wraith is telling the truth, then I want you two to go check it out. See if you can find anything."

They nodded, and hurried out. Sheppard signalled to Teyla and Ronon to follow him. "I'm gonna get some security teams ready, just in case we need them." Weir nodded.

"Okay, keep me informed."

Then, Elizabeth was alone, and very unsettled.


	2. Chapter 2

******Chapter 2.**

"Keep up!" Zelenka repeated for the third time, running down the hallway. About halfway, he took a glance behind him and saw that Rodney wasn't even behind him any more. He cursed under his breath in Czech, before stopping, turning, and placing his hands on his hips, waiting for the more overweight scientist to come panting around the corner. After a while, McKay eventually came, a half eaten sandwich in one hand and a can of soda in the other. "Unbelievable...," Zelenka muttered, before shouting: "Don't you ever stop eating?"

"You know full well that I need to eat a lot more than the other members on this base because I use up so much energy thinking...".

"Yeah right... Come on!".

After a few minutes, they were both standing in McKay's lab, without the slightest idea where to begin. They remained thinking in this almost frozen state for about ten minutes, before finally, Rodney had an idea. "What about," he began excitedly, "We reprogram the Ancient's life signs detector to detect any kind of nuclear fluctuations in the city. Sure, it'd take a considerable manpower to manually reconfigure every control crystal correctly, but I see no other alternative other than to search every room in the city ourselves. That could take hours." Even the thought of searching the city himself mad McKay feel tired. "No no no no...", Zelenka started. "That'd take too much power away from essential systems. Without at least another ZPM, we couldn't spare enough power.". Again, they were both quiet.

Then, Zelenka spoke again. "Although, we could modify the city's shield into a nuclear detector, similar to the time when we used it as a city wide anti-Replicator weapon." Rodney's face lit up.

"Yes! Of course we would have to override some built in safety features, and recalculate all the particle densities frequencies, but it'd hardly use any power at all. In fact, it'd be just like raising the shield for about 10 seconds or so." They beamed at each other, then hurried to their keyboards to begin work. Rodney radioed Sheppard:

"Sheppard, me and Radek have an idea, but it could take anywhere between one and three hours to implement."

"Okay," came the reply, "keep me informed. Sheppard out."

_**Dr. Weir, The Gateroom.**_

Weir heard a boom. A huge, deafening, massive bang. Her headset came to life: "Dr.

Weir," a voice began. "A nuclear explosion was just recorded on the east side of the city. It has been automatically sealed off to protect the rest of us from the radiation."

The voice hesitated. "...Thirty-Four staff members reported dead so far."

Weir's face sunk into her hands.

"Copy that."

_**John Sheppard, Jumper bay.**_

John heard a bang, and immediately feared the worst. Teyla glanced at him, a strained look on her face. "I can feel a great deal of loss John."

"I thought you could only sense Wraith..." Sheppard inquired.

"I can. There must be Wraith here in the city."

John's radio came on: "John, it's Elizabeth. One of the bombs just went off, and it took 34 of our people with it."

"That's not it, Elizabeth. It took some Wraith with it too."

"But that's impossible..."

"No, there are Wraith in the city. In fact..." he trailed off.

___All Weir could hear were screams and gunfire__._


End file.
